Token Overview: NEO – China’s own version of Ethereum

Rebranding and repositioning

Antshares was China’s first open blockchain, and it was created in 2014. Antshares was renamed NEO in August 2017 to appeal to a broader market, also outside of China. NEO has tokens attached to its service, also called NEO, and these tokens can be used to operate operations in smart contracts.

Compared with Ethereum

NEO is mentioned by many as the Chinese version of Ethereum because NEO is also smart-based and enables the development of dApps (decentralized applications) on the blockchain.

The first token to be developed on NEO’s blockchain is the Red Pulse (RPX). During the crowdfunding phase, It raised 15 million USD (hard cap) in two hours. Today there are over 30 NEO NEP-5 tokens, and the number of actors utilizing the NEO project is rapidly increasing.

Bull trend and increased market volume

NEO tokens have experienced an adventurous price growth over the past two years. On May 30, 2017, one token cost less than $ 1, while at the time of writing it is worth $ 22. In comparison, Ethereum is $ 367 per token, and many believe that the upside potential of NEO is still enormous.

Neo is today (August 8, 2018) the 15. Largest cryptocurrency in the world with a market value of just over $ 1.44 billion.

dApps – the key to mass adoption by Neo

NEO contains a built-in virtual machine, allowing developers to write programs and develop dApps on their blockchain using a variety of known programming languages like Python, Go, Microsoft.Net, Kotlin & Java. Ethereum on the other hand only allows service development on its blockade using a much less known programming language called Solidity.

NEO’s broad programming language support facilitates rapid adoption in the global market and opens a higher level of service development on its blockade than Ethereum today offers.

The potential for rapid growth in a protectionistic China

Another success factor is that Neo has already received what can be interpreted as indirect support from Chinese authorities. Neo developers collaborate directly with Chinese certificate authorities to integrate property value databases into smart contracts, according to a report from Bitcoinist.

It is a known matter that the Chinese are protectionists, and cultivate their own services and products instead of adopting existing projects from the West. Just look at WeChat, Baidu Tieba, YouKu DiDi Chuxing and Weibo, which can be considered as replacements for Facebook, Google, Uber and Twitter, respectively. It is, therefore, reasonable to believe that the Chinese will prioritize Neo rather than Ethereum and that more Asian countries will follow in China’s footsteps.

Source: Coinmarketcap

Can it seriously compete against Ethereum?

NEO is an incredibly exciting technology with much potential, and the same goes for NEO-tokens as investment instruments. It will be fun to keep up with technology development and adoption in the coming years to see if NEO can seriously become a significant contender for its ‘big brother’ Ethereum.